6/24/2013

Potential problems that emanate from gambling traverse from financial to legal sanctions. That occasional trip to live casinos or occasional sports betting if uncontrolled can easily turn into addiction. It’s all fun until it haunts you back with job loss and failure of personal relationships. Well, these are what three famous hockey players had to deal with in the middle of their glimmering careers.

Don Gallinger

If you think that game fixing and gambling were spawned just recently, you got it wrong. As early as the 1940s, media reports have noted of such incidents in the scene of the National Hockey League or the NHL. The longest suspension in the league’s history was given to Donald Calvin Gallinger. The Canadian hockey player played more than 200 games in his career. He broke into stardom in 1942, but his budding career was cut short in 1948 when he was found guilty of massive betting (for his team to lose) and association with a famous Detroit gambler of their period, James Tamer.

Gallinger and his teammate Billy Taylor were both banned for life in the NHL. They were able to get back in the league in 1970, following more than two decades of sanctions.

Richard Tocchet

Another Canadian hockey star got himself involved in gambling hullaballoos. Richard Tocchet was a popular ice hockey right winger before he became Tampa Bay Lightning’s Head Coach. The young Tocchet was drafted in 1983 and played for 18 seasons in the NHL.

He retired his jersey in 2002. Four years after, he visited headlines of newspapers for allegations of funding a nationwide sports gambling organization. There were a number of active NHL players at that time that were dragged into this scandal. He pleaded guilty in 2007 and served two years in probation.

Jaromir Jagr

Being named as the most successful European player to ever set foot in the NHL and is considered one of history’s finest athletes in hockey, you can’t help but to ask why Jaromir Jagr became involved in gambling problems.

Jagr hails from the Czech Republic and is the country’s premier hockey player for many winter Olympics. He served as captain for the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Rangers. A year following his draft, he immediately won 2 Stanley Cup titles. He was the league’s scoring leader for five times and a member of the NHL First All Star Team seven times.

Just like any gambling addiction, Jagr was led to personal and financial ruin. In 2003, he confessed to paying nearly a million U.S. dollars to two internet gambling sites. That same year, he was sued by the Internal Revenue Service for tax evasion cases that cost him millions more.

These famous athletes are representations of the menace that haunts this society – gambling addiction. Whether you’re going from a simple $2 lottery ticket to $200,000 bets in casinos, you should be able to control the habit before it takes full control of you. There’s nothing wrong if you do it occasionally and for entertainment, but if it’s negatively impacting your life, you should start seeking professional help.